Announcements, ICANN Announcements, Industry News, Registries

ICANN Approves .XXX

Its been over 10 years since the debate of having .XXX as a top level domain (TLD) started and finally, ICANN has approved the ICM Registry’s application to operate .XXX as a TLD. This decision was taken at the 40th ICANN Meeting at San Francisco earlier this year.

This single agenda has definitely generated the highest volumes of community comments than nearly any other issue ever faced within ICANN in the past.

The ICM Registry has been handed over the responsibility of operating the .XXX TLD provided there are improved and new benefits to the TLD.

All said and done, not everyone in the Adult industry has welcomed the .XXX TLD wholeheartedly. The Free Speech Coalition, a group sponsored by the Adult Entertainment Trade Association is against .XXX and the Registry’s rulings.

The Sunrise periods (3) will be starting over the coming months.

Do you see .xxx as the next “big thing” in the domain market?

ICANN Announcements, Industry News

Quick Notes on the new ICANN Application

Hello folks, as some of you may already know, last week, ICANN published its revamped Registrar Accreditation application (effective immediately). I thought I’d write a quick snapshot post on this development.
The first glance at the new application tells you that this version is much longer, more comprehensive, and the questions more specific. There’s also more due diligence screening, both on technical and operational aspects of the business. It’s clear that these come from the hard lessons that the industry has learnt over the past few years, including Registrar failures and instances of Registrar/reseller non-compliance.
Let me include in brief, some notes on the changes below:
Proof of Establishment: And I’m not referring to just the company incorporation certificate. Aspiring Registrars would now also need to show that they’re a credible company backed with sufficient experience and expertise.
UDRP, IRTP, WDRP Compliance, and Registrar Data Escrow (RDE): ICANN expects the applicant to submit an operational plan to show that their Registrar will always be compliant with all policies and guidelines. Also RDE (which has now been around for a while now) is now officially part of the ICANN Accreditation Application too.
Financial Stability: This has always been a perceived hurdle for aspiring Registrars where applicants feel they need to pay US$70,000 to ICANN. This has been made clearer now that ICANN only asks the applicant to prove his capability to raise such capital, and sufficient liquid assets reflecting in their balance sheet.
Security Policy: Learning from a handful of Registrar failures that occurred over the past 2-3 years, ICANN now wants to ensure that such cases never occur again. In the event that this happens, ICANN mandates that the Registrar be prepared with a failover plan (both technical and operational).
This is in no way a comprehensive list of the changes that ICANN has implemented but it does cover the more significant ones. This is the first time in 10 years that the form has been reworked. ICANN says that the introduction of the new form is part of an ongoing improvement process. It’s also a timely update to align the Accreditation process with several changes in the RAA, such as the introduction of Data Escrow mandate.
We believe this is a step in the right direction, in safeguarding the interest of the consumer, but to also bring about more awareness, responsibility and clarity in the Registrar community.
If you have questions about the new process feel free to write us at consult [at] logicboxes.com
P.S.: We’ll soon be announcing an educational webinar, with an industry veteran as our guest speaker. Watch this space for more!

Hello folks, as some of you may already know, last week, ICANN published its revamped Registrar Accreditation application (effective immediately). I thought I’d write a quick snapshot post on this development.

The first glance at the new application tells you that this version is much longer, more comprehensive, and the questions more specific. There’s also more due diligence screening, both on technical and operational aspects of the business. It’s clear that these come from the hard lessons that the industry has learnt over the past few years, including Registrar failures and instances of Registrar/reseller non-compliance.

Let me include in brief, some notes on the changes below:

  • Proof of Establishment: And I’m not referring to just the company incorporation certificate. Aspiring Registrars would now also need to show that they’re a credible company backed with sufficient experience and expertise.
  • UDRP, IRTP, WDRP Compliance, and Registrar Data Escrow (RDE): ICANN expects the applicant to submit an operational plan to show that their Registrar will always be compliant with all policies and guidelines. Also RDE (which has now been around for a while now) is now officially part of the ICANN Accreditation Application too.
  • Financial Stability: This has always been a perceived hurdle for aspiring Registrars where applicants feel they need to pay US$70,000 to ICANN. This has been made clearer now that ICANN only asks the applicant to prove his capability to raise such capital, and sufficient liquid assets reflecting in their balance sheet.
  • Security Policy: Learning from a handful of Registrar failures that occurred over the past 2-3 years, ICANN now wants to ensure that such cases never occur again. In the event that this happens, ICANN mandates that the Registrar be prepared with a failover plan (both technical and operational).

This is in no way a comprehensive list of the changes that ICANN has implemented but it does cover the more significant ones. This is the first time in 10 years that the form has been reworked. ICANN says that the introduction of the new form is part of an ongoing improvement process. It’s also a timely update to align the Accreditation process with several changes in the RAA, such as the introduction of Data Escrow mandate.

We believe this is a step in the right direction, in safeguarding the interest of the consumer, but to also bring about more awareness, responsibility and clarity in the Registrar community.

If you have questions about the new process feel free to write us at consult [at] logicboxes.com

P.S.: We’ll soon be announcing an educational webinar, with an industry veteran as our guest speaker. Watch this space for more!

ICANN Announcements

ICANN Opens Comment Period on Proposed Add Grace Period Modifications for NeuStar and Afilias

ICANN is today opening public comment periods on requests submitted by NeuStar, the .BIZ registry, and Afilias, the .INFO registry, to modify terms regarding the add grace period (AGP) in their respective registry agreements.

On 5 February 2008, NeuStar and Afilias submitted separate but similar requests through the Registry Services Evaluation Process to modify the AGP in their respective TLDs in order “to address the excessive delete problem” (i.e. domain tasting) in .BIZ and .INFO. Currently there are no limitations on the number of deletions that a registrar can process and receive a refund during the five-day AGP. The proposed service would limit the number of AGP deletions where a registrar could receive a full registration fee credit each month: either 50 per month or 10% of that registrar’s net new monthly domain name registrations, whichever is greater. A registrar would be permitted to delete as many names as it wished during the five-day AGP, receiving credit throughout the month. However, at the end of the .BIZ or .INFO normal monthly billing cycle the Registrar’s account would be debited for the full value of the domain name registrations that exceeded the month’s set threshold.

As provided for by existing consensus policy (http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/rsep.html), ICANN has undertaken a preliminary determination to determine whether the proposed modifications might raise significant security or stability, or competition issues. ICANN’s determination is that the proposed modifications by NeuStar and Afilias do not raise such issues.

The next step in evaluation is that (because implementation of the proposals would require changes to the .BIZ and .INFO Registry Agreements) ICANN will post the proposed amendments, solicit public comment and refer the proposals to the ICANN Board for consideration.

A copy of the proposed NeuStar amendment is available here [PDF, 25K], and a copy of the proposed Afilias amendment is available here [PDF, 25K]. Both amendments provide for changes to Appendix 7, Section 3.1.1. Comments on the NeuStar amendment submitted to [email protected] will be considered until 23:59 UTC 28 March 2008 and may be viewed at http://forum.icann.org/lists/neustar-agp-proposal/. Comments on the Afilias amendment submitted to [email protected] will be considered until 23:59 UTC 28 March 2008 and may be viewed at http://forum.icann.org/lists/afilias-agp-proposal/. Please keep in mind that these are separate proposals with separate public comment forums.

All documentation regarding the NeuStar proposal is available at http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/submitted_app.html#2008001, while documentation on the Afilias proposal is available at http://www.icann.org/registries/rsep/submitted_app.html#2008002.

ICANN Announcements

Registration Now Open for ICANN’s 32nd International Public Meeting to be held in Paris, France

ICANN’s next meeting will be held 22 – 27 June 2008 in Paris, France at Le Méridien Montparnasse. The meeting is free to attend, and open to any interested person. ICANN encourages broad participation in its bottom-up consensus-development processes. You can participate in these meetings in person, through the webcast or other remote participation opportunities, and/or by joining one of the various ICANN-related mailing lists.

Those who wish to attend are encouraged to start planning now and complete the online registration form. ICANN group rates are also now available at Le Méridien Montparnasse and reservations can be made through our website.

More information about additional supporting hotels, transportation and the meeting agenda will be posted as it becomes available. Please send any questions to [email protected].

ICANN Announcements

Briefing Note on the ICANN New Delhi Meeting

ICANN staff has produced a briefing note on the New Delhi meeting of 10-15 February 2008. This meeting was ICANN’s 31st meeting and was hosted by ICANN and the Indian Government and officially opened by Shri Jainder Singh, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, the Government of India.

The briefing note summarizes key developments at the New Delhi meeting and outlines next steps and sources of further information for each. The topics included are:

  • New generic Top Level Domains (gTDs)
  • Internationalized Domain Names
  • GNSO Improvements
  • Domain Tasting
  • Accountability and Transparency
  • The Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the United States National Telecommunications and Information Administration
  • IPv6
  • Operations and Budget Planning
  • Registrar Failure Workshop
  • Translation Program

The briefing note is an informal summary. The authoritative records of official meetings will be available in their minutes.

Further information about the meeting, including presentations and transcripts is available at http://delhi.icann.org/ .

Information about the next meeting which will be from 22-27 June 2008 in Paris, France will be on the ICANN website soon at http://www.icann.org/meetings/.